Talks between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Muslim groups concluded in Finland on Monday without a major breakthrough, Finnish media reported.
The four-day talks, aimed at ending violence between Iraqi groups, started in secret on Aug. 31 at an undisclosed location in Finland under the auspices of the Crisis Management Initiative (CMI) headed by former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari.
Meeri-Maria Jaarva, a CMI spokeswoman, said the meeting was over but declined to comment further.
CMI told the Finnish News Agency that the two sides had not agreed on a follow-up meeting.
CMI didn't reveal who took part in the closed-door talks nor the venue of the meeting citing security concerns. It only described the talks as a seminar that will look at lessons learned from the South Africa and Northern Ireland peace processes and study how these processes could benefit Iraq.
According to Finnish media reports, the participants included Minister of State for National Dialogue Akram al-Hakim, who is a senior official of Iraq's Supreme Islamic Council, as well as representatives of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, Sunni politician Saleh al-Mutlaq and a senior figure from Prime MinisterNuri al-Maliki's Shiite Dawa party.
The leader of the largest Sunni Arab political group, Adnan al-Dulaimi, and Humam Hammoudi, the Shiite chairman of the Iraqi parliament's foreign affairs committee, were reported to have attended the talks.
In addition, representatives from the peace processes in South Africa and Northern Ireland also took part in the seminar and spoke about their experiences of conflict resolution.
The CMI was founded by Ahtisaari in 2000. In 2005, the group mediated a peace accord between the Indonesian government and rebels in the province of Aceh.
(Xinhua News Agency September 4, 2007)
